‘Without water, we’re out of business’
South Texas farmers face a future without the needed resource, threatening industry and raising worries over allotment for crops
MCALLEN — A bright green citrus the size of a baseball sat on the tailgate of Dale Murden’s truck parked alongside his Cameron County groves Thursday morning. “You see that fruit right there?” he asked. “It should be twice that size right now.”
“You anticipate drought. You just do,” said Murden, a farmer for more than 40 years. “Never had a season where I didn’t have any water.”
This year came close. He’s only been able to water his fields once, in January, when he received his allocation from the watermaster. Normally, he would’ve irrigated six to seven times by now.
Crops flooded with Hurricane Hanna at the start of the pandemic in 2020, froze the next year and are now drying up through a drought that is forcing farmers to make hard choices.
“Who could’ve planned that? I mean, damn. I don’t know what’s next,” Murden said.
Between citrus and sugarcane, the other ubiquitously planted Rio Grande Valley crop, both grow across 25,000 acres of commercial industry in South Texas. The drought threatens a nearly billion-dollar business and thousands of jobs.
“Without water, we’re out of business,” Murden said.
Between the water wars with Mexico, the absence of rain and the subsequent declining levels at the Amistad and Falcon International reservoirs, where South Texas gets its water supply, Valley land is parched.
“We have not had an allocation in five months now,” Sonny Hinojosa, the general manager of Hidalgo County’s Irrigation District No. 2, said Friday.
Water irrigation districts stand between irrigators and the watermaster. Farmers have a sort of water bank account with the state, but they can only withdraw their allocations through the water irrigation district to which they belong.
The state’s watermaster from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality determines, however, how much water the irrigation district will manage for their region.
Hinojosa learned the intricacies of the process during his eight years at TCEQ’s watermaster office before working at the irrigation district where he’s been for nearly 28 years.
Cities, industrial and domestic users have priority over accounts held by irrigators and mining operators.
The amount the districts receive reflects the year’s abundance or scarcity of water.
On a good year, like 2017, Hinojosa said the district received over a million acre-feet in allocation. Acre-feet is the unit of measurement often used when discussing irrigation. Lean years, like in 2012, it only saw 218,000 acre-feet come its way.
Strategizing can help mitigate the effects of drought, but even those are drying up.
Joe Metz owns nearly 1,100 acres of farms and pastures in Hidalgo County. “Right now, our farm is just practically out of water,” he said.
Although Metz is semiretired and rents out most of his land to others planting crops or raising cattle, he worries about the availability of water.
The last time Metz can recall a similar crisis was 20 years ago, when he was still at the tiller planting sugarcane, a perennial crop that grows like grass yearround. “I bought other people’s allocation.”
These days, no one has extra supply to sell.
Before 2020, farmers like Metz and Murden weren’t buying extra water to irrigate their fields on an ideal 20-day schedule between rain showers. It’s not possible to stay on that schedule during droughts.
In June, the state dipped into the 75,000 acre-feet operational reserve. The amount it took represents more than it has taken in recent memory.
“They did dip into it — 54,500 acre-feet, which is probably the largest loss that we’ve experienced in quite some time, if not ever,” Hinojosa said.
Farmers could resort to other strategies like changing from a flooding system where water pools in dredges between trees to a drip-system that uses microsprinklers and conserves water.
They can also decrease the ground they water. Last month, Murden bulldozed about 20 acres worth of older trees to reduce the amount he needed to irrigate from 80 to 60 acres.
Certain fields can remain fallow, or nonproductive, for the year. It’s harder to do that with citrus, Murden pointed out.
“Can we keep the trees alive or do we even want to keep the trees alive? I’m here to grow fruit, not trees,” Murden said.
Citrus output during the February 2021 freeze was about 25 percent of its average. This year, growers were hoping to go up to 60 percent or 70 percent and reclaim the No. 1 spot they lost as the state that produces the most grapefruit.
Now, Murden’s watching his fields closely and taking it a day at a time.
“We’re going to start harvesting in October. We probably won’t even think about harvesting this grove until January or February. It’s too small,” he said.